


Memorial Day

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Grief/Mourning, MCD is canonical and has already happened, Memorial Day, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 10:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: Steve has something to do on Memorial Day that he's had to put off for a long time.





	Memorial Day

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, unexpected fic! *hugs the muse* Not beta'd. I know that someone else came up with the central conceit of this story, either in a Tumblr post or a complete fic, but I don't remember who. Kudos to them, whoever they are. If anyone knows, tell me and I'll give credit where it's due.

Steve never quite knows how to feel on Memorial Day. He could be dead, after all; he could be among the fallen soldiers being commemorated. He's mostly grateful he's alive, but sometimes he feels like he should be dead. He cheated death; he made a sacrifice without really paying for it, and someday, the payment is going to come due.

Of all the people he's lost, only one died during the war, and that's Bucky. Only Bucky didn't die, either. His survival is even stranger and more improbable than Steve's. Juniper died on a mission, but that was after Steve went down with the Valkyrie. Dugan, Morita, Jones, Falsworth, Dernier, all survived. Dernier died in the late fifties; Falsworth in 1963, on the same day as President John F. Kennedy. Dugan died in 1977; Jones and Morita lived the longest and had kids and grandkids who are still around. Steve has met a few of them. Morita and Falsworth both went into politics; Morita wound up in the California state Senate, and Falsworth in Parliament. Jones worked with Peggy at SHIELD for a while and was active in the civil rights movement.

Peggy... Peggy's death is still an open wound. He didn't have time to grieve for her. The Sokovia Accords, the Vienna bombing, the hunt for Bucky, the confrontation with Zemo and then with Tony... he'd cried himself to sleep night after night, in Wakanda, with Bucky in cryo, Peggy gone. All he had were memories, of Peggy when he'd met her, Bucky before the war, and memories were no better than dreams; a man could dream of a banquet and still wake up hungry. 

Finally, finally, though, he can let it go. It's nearing sunset on Memorial Day, a hot and humid day in Brooklyn, and he's walking across the bridge with Bucky at his left and just slightly behind him, the way Bucky had walked with him on missions. Bucky walks more lightly now; he no longer carries himself like a hunted animal. His left arm is a black vibranium prosthetic crafted in Wakanda, masked by a holographic field; he's clean-shaven, and his long hair is pulled into a neat bun under a baseball cap that he wears more out of habit than anything else. Anyone who looks at him will see a good-looking, casually dressed guy in his thirties, not a World War Two legend, not the Winter Soldier.

Steve's instinct was to put on a suit and tie and polish his shoes. But they're not going to a church or even a cemetery. Sharon Carter is waiting for them on the bridge. She's wearing a pretty sundress in a floral print, coral and blue, and flat sandals, and she's holding something wrapped in shimmery red scarf.

"Steve," she acknowledges. "Barnes."

They both nod back. Sharon puts the thing in the scarf on the bridge railing. "Some of the ashes went to the columbarium in her family's parish church back in England. Some of them went to her kids, my cousins." Steve knows that Peggy's children, a daughter and a son, did not approve of their mother's profession and aren't close to Sharon, who followed in her footsteps. "But she put this in her will, that some of them--" She chokes a little bit, and blinks; a single tear runs down each cheek. "She didn't know we'd have to wait this long."

"I'm sorry," Steve begins. Sharon shakes her head, vigorously.

"It's not your fault. Or yours," she looks at Bucky. "Shit happens. We don't control everything, no matter how hard we try. But we can still carry out her wishes, finally." She pushes the thing in the scarf toward Steve. "She told me years ago that when the last remaining vial of your blood fell into her hands, she came here and poured it out, so that nobody could use it any more, nobody could use you any more." Her eyes, glistening with fresh tears, rest on Bucky for a moment; she knows her aunt's efforts didn't stop Howard, didn't stop the Russians, didn't prevent the division of the Avengers and the fight that led Steve to give up the shield. "So you can keep her ashes, if you want, or you can empty them, here. Like she did."

Sniffling, Sharon wipes her eyes and steps back from the railing. Slowly, Steve unwinds the heavy red silk scarf to uncover a blue and white urn. It's a shapely thing that looks vaguely Classical, pleasing to his artist's eye. Bucky's hand rests for a moment at his waist. Steve knows what he has to do. 

The lid, unexpectedly, unscrews. He looks for a moment at the dark gritty stuff that is all that remains of the body of Margaret Carter, the woman he loved. If he touches it, he thinks, he will lose forever the memory of her hair, heavy and silky like the red scarf, her skin, beautifully fine even in old age, her lush firm mouth. He upends the jar and watches the stuff shower into the river, a cloud that disappears as surely as rain. It's almost completely dark now.

Without making a conscious decision, Steve smashes the urn against the railing and sweeps away the beautiful fragments, letting them fall. 

Sharon is crying now. He feels awkward, hugging her, but she clings hard for a moment and it's all right. "Keep the scarf," she says against his ear. "It was hers. She'd want you to have it." She gives him a kiss on the cheek, nods to Bucky, and turns and walks away without saying anything else. 

In the warm, humid city darkness, broken by the city's lights, Bucky puts his arm around Steve's waist. "Let's go home," he says, letting his lips brush Steve's cheek. Steve nods; folds the red scarf into a neat square and tucks it under his arm. Nat and Sam are waiting. Sam promised them barbecue. It's gonna be all right.


End file.
